Innocent Murderer (31 page)

“You okay?” I asked, but she was gone before she could hear my question.

My graduate student and I spent the afternoon going over his thesis to see what he still needed to do before he had to defend it. I remembered my own defence — four male professors peppering me with questions. After it was over I was sure they had spent hours coming up with the most difficult ones they could find. I had come out feeling sure I'd flunked. But I'd passed with much praise. It made me realize that just because you believe something bad is going to happen that doesn't make it so.

But it was unnerving to be so sure — I mean, where did that come from? As I said: unnerving.

I left work in plenty of time to get the food and drinks, sit in rush hour traffic, and get to Martha's twenty minutes before the writing group. I was getting nervous about how I was going to handle my questions and I sat in the car outside for five minutes, pulling myself together.

I managed to juggle all the groceries and drinks so that I could take them all in one trip, except that I forgot about the door into the apartment building. I waited a bit, hop
–
ing someone would come and was just starting to bend down to put some of the groceries on the walkway when a man's voice said, “Here, I'll get the door for you.”

I couldn't look over the paper grocery bags to see who it was but I was thankful. I felt my way up the step and through the door with my feet, while trying to pin
–
point the voice, which was familiar.

“Taking the elevator?”

I mumbled “Yes,” and he asked me if he could take some of my groceries. I wasn't so keen on giving them up to a strange man, especially a strange man I couldn't see, but as I shifted them in my arms one of them slipped and the stranger grabbed it before it hit the floor. At that moment I could see who it was: Jason. He broke out into a nice smile and said, “Cordi, how nice to see you.”

I smiled back as we stepped into the elevator and he pressed twelve. By the time we got to Martha's apartment Jason miraculously had both shopping bags and the case of pop, and he made them look about as big as pincush
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ions. I rapped on Martha's door and waited. And waited. We looked at each other and I rapped again. No answer.

“She must be stuck in traffic,” I said.

Jason put down the groceries and we stood awk
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wardly in the hall until I said, “What exactly did you mean when you said there had been others; that Michael wasn't the only one?”

Jason sucked on his lip and stared at me.

I stared back.

“Just little things that only a lover would understand. Sometimes she'd be distraught for days on end for no apparent reason, and other times I'd catch her poring over the newspapers as if her life depended on it.”

“Are you talking about Heather?” I asked.

“You know about her? Terry swore it was an acci
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dent, that the wheel had jerked suddenly and the boat had mowed Heather down. Owen said so too. I was there as well, but I didn't see anything until it was all over. But she was hiding something from me. I know that it had to do with Heather.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don't know, but I got the feeling there was more to Heather's death than Terry was letting on.”

We were interrupted as first LuEllen, then Tracey and George (who hadn't been invited), Elizabeth, Sandy, and Peter all arrived. Arthur and Owen had had to beg off, but I'd follow up with them later.

By the time Martha arrived everyone was sitting on the floor nursing a beer and talking about all the good times on the ship. I had to endure joke after joke about being seasick and telling everyone that someone was out to kill me.

I was more than a little relieved to see Martha. I hadn't wanted to start asking questions in the hallway.

We all trooped into her little apartment, which had been transformed into an apartment full of chairs and one sofa. There wasn't room for anything else and everyone stood awkwardly on the threshold wondering what to do. Martha made a big show about getting everyone to sit down and after some fairly complicated gymnastics everyone finally found a seat.

When I figured everyone was settled I moved to a position where I could see all of them and called their attention to me. I could tell by the way they looked at me that they were expecting a little speech about the trip, and maybe a tribute of some kind to Sally and Terry. But that's not what they got. Instead they got this:

“Arthur and Sandy tell me Sally was pretending to be someone she wasn't. I want to know why.”

I looked at all their faces. No one said anything but there were a few shakes of the head.

“Cordi, where do you come up with these scenarios?” asked Elizabeth.

“The same place you do.”

She looked confused. “Meaning what?” she asked.

“Meaning you've all been lying about something and I want to know what it is.”

No one spoke. I tried again. “LuEllen.” She jumped at her name. “Elizabeth.” She looked straight at me. “Tracey.” She avoided my gaze. “Peter.” He tilted his head. “Jason.” He returned my stare. “Owen and Arthur. Three of you are members of the writing club. At least five of you are connected to Michael's death in one way or another. And at least two of you are connected to the death of a woman on the Rideau Canal. Both deaths are connected to Terry. Coincidence? I don't think so. So what are you all hiding?”

Still no one spoke.

“I don't know what you were up to, but I believe Sally was an innocent woman and I don't think she deserves to go down in history as Terry's murderer.” I stopped speaking and let the silence pull them out of their guilt.

Tracey was the first to break. “She was a monster!” she blurted. George tried to stop her but she shrugged him off and the surprised look on his face was comical. “She killed Heather in cold blood. Planned it perfectly.”

“There's no proof of that,” I said.

“Of course not. She was too good. She planned the perfect murders. Turned the steering wheel at the last moment, that's what I think. And my sister had been so excited because Terry was sure her book was going to be a bestseller.”

“Heather was a writer?” I asked, surprised.

Tracey looked at me and then at the others as if look
–
ing for help. She bit her lip. “Yes.”

It hit me as if I'd been punched in my neurons. “So she was working on a manuscript at the time of her death?”

“Yes.”

“Was it good?”

“I don't know. I never had the chance to read it. Not that I could have. It was all handwritten and her handwrit
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ing was really bad. She was very private about her writing.”

I looked over at Elizabeth and caught her eye. “Isn't that what Michael was like?

She nodded.

“Three manuscripts: Heather's, Michael's, and now Sally's, all handwritten by shy writers who happened to die either by Terry's hand or in her vicinity.”

“Sally wasn't a recluse or a writer, she was just acting a part. But she wouldn't tell me why,” said Sandy. “And she would never have handwritten a manuscript, so what the hell is going on?”

But I already knew. I looked around at the other faces.

Most of them weren't looking at me. They were looking anywhere else. “Terry stole Michael and Heather's books.”

You could have heard a dust mote fall. I looked around at my audience. Only a few people looked stunned at my revelation. The rest shifted their eyes downward in a gesture that unmistakably said, “We already knew.”

“She was stalking vulnerable writers and then mur
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dering them for their books. Sally, Heather, and how many others?” I raised my voice. “And what about Sally? Why was she acting a part?”

I let the silence drag on forever, trying to goad some
–
one into talking.

It worked. “We had a plan to take Terry down.” Elizabeth's quiet voice cut through the silence like a deaf
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ening gong. “She was out of control. Killing for the sake of a book. We had no proof. That's what Sally was going to get for us. It had to stop.”

“So you hired her to play the part of a vulnerable writer.”

“We had to catch Terry red-handed. It was the only way. Sally was our eyes and ears. We knew we'd hooked Terry when, weeks before the cruise, Sally told us that Terry was interested in her book and wanted to help her sell it. She just had to promise to keep quiet about it and not let anyone read it. She said someone could steal it that way. So Sally went along with it.”

“And it killed her,” I said.

In the silence that followed I could hear the thud shunt of the elevator. I was about to say something else when Sandy broke in. “Did Sally know?” Her voice wobbled on all three words as she directed her question at Elizabeth.

“Know what?”

“That you were using her to nail the murderer?”

Elizabeth had the grace to look away as she shook her head and I noticed Tracey, LuEllen, and Peter were all looking away too.

“I think she suspected something near the end,” said Elizabeth and her voice trailed off.

“You killed her,” said Sandy in a quiet, dangerous voice.

“You have to believe us. It was never meant to hap
–
pen,” said Elizabeth.

“So you set Terry up. You set your trap and you waited for Terry to fall for it,” I said.

Tracey began to cry. The others shuffled uncomfort
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ably, but LuEllen stepped up to the plate. “Sally was never meant to die. We had a schedule. One of us fol
–
lowed her everywhere.”

“Except that night.”

“Except that night. She snuck out of her room and by the time we found her she was dead.”

“We just wanted to catch Terry in the act,” said Eliz
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abeth. “We planned to stop her before she killed. We thought we'd thought of every possible scenario and we could protect her.” She paused and I suddenly thought of the asinine question she had asked me that day on the ship. “It was a good plan,” she continued, “and Sally was playing her part beautifully.”

I marvelled at how the human mind could be so con
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voluted; all of this horror created by a need for revenge.

They seemed such ordinary people, pushed over the brink by uncontrolled emotions.

“But why would a writer want to steal from another writer?” asked George.

“Because she couldn't write,” I said.

Elizabeth shook her head. “But the lecture on the ship where she crucified Tracey's writing. She made it a lot better.”

“But that's different,” said Martha. “Lots of teach
–
ers are good at fixing a manuscript, but when it comes to writing a full length book of their own they just can't do it. Either they can't do dialogue, or they can't do prose, or they have no stamina, or their plots stink.” She smiled at me as if to say, “See, I know more about this than you think.”

“Okay,” I said. “So Terry had to use Owen as her ghostwriter for her first non-fiction book. My bet is that when she remembered Michael's manuscript she decided to make use of it, since he was dead and Owen couldn't write fiction. After that she had to keep looking for more victims.”

“She's only written two works of fiction and one non-fiction book in seven years,” said LuEllen.

Which meant she'd had trouble finding her victims — unless she used a pseudonym. The thought made me shiver. I wished Owen was here. He'd be able to confirm all this.

“What about Sally's manuscript? Where did it come from?” I asked.

“We had her copy out a well-written, obscure book that Terry wouldn't recognize.”

“Just like Michael and Heather — handwritten. How the hell did Terry find two dinosaurs who were good writers?”

“As Martha said, she could turn a lousy manuscript into something good, she only needed to find authors who hated to create by computer — there's lots of those around still.”

“Why didn't Terry recognize you all?”

“She never saw LuEllen after the accident. I never attended Michael's trial and kept out of the newspapers as much as I could,” said Elizabeth.

I looked at Tracey. She looked scared and George stepped in for her. “Tracey had a medical illness during the trial and never crossed paths with Terry.” Then added, somewhat defensively, “Tracey's parents were there.”

I looked at Peter and then realized I already knew the answer. He was a completely different man with a beard.

“And Heather? How did you find out about Heather?”

I asked.

“We kept track of Terry,” said Peter. “And when we found out about the boating accident we hired a pri
–
vate investigator who led us to Tracey. When we learned Heather was a writer and had been taking a course from Terry we began putting the pieces together. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence that one woman could end up being involved in the deaths of two people who happened to be her students. Three now, counting Sally.”

“But she didn't murder Sally,” I interrupted, deciding to put the record straight.

“That's not true. Sally could easily have been drowned by Terry, but someone saw and went to her cabin to argue it out,” Peter said, staring at Jason. “Whoever did it drowned her in the tub and then dumped her body in the pool with Sally, hoping everyone would believe one had drowned trying to save the other. They obviously didn't know the pool was salt water.”

As I digested this new bit of information Peter con
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tinued, “And imagine having the good fortune to have the only juror on your trial who's holding out for a guilty verdict mysteriously fall down a concrete staircase. It was all just too suspicious.”

“And then she killed Sally to get sole possession of her book and made it look like suicide by forging a note.” I didn't feel like pointing out that the note had not been forged. “Which begs the same old question: who killed Terry?”